The United States of Solar: The top 5 in solar power

Arizona has to be in there too. But would you have guessed that New Jersey is a solar powerhouse? Or that the state with tar in its nickname generates more electricity from solar than the one dubbed the Sunshine State?

The average price of a solar panel has declined by 60% since 2011, according to solar industry data. Leasing rooftop solar systems popularized residential solar, and new financing products are hoping to help with ownership.

In some states, grid parity — the point that solar energy will cost just about the same as energy from conventional sources — is thought to have arrived for large industrial consumers, and is forecast to arrive for everyone else in a few years.

Welcome to the United States of Solar: check how your state ranks, and which states are giving others a run for their rays.

But the Golden State has not rested on its laurels. The state added 2,745 megawatts of solar in 2013 — half of all solar capacity ever added in California was installed last year. That would be enough to power 607,689 homes, according to SEIA.

Marquee solar companies such as SolarCity Corp.
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in San Mateo, and SunEdison Inc.
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in Belmont, are headquartered in the state.

SolarCity and SunEdison were among the first companies to offer the leasing of rooftop solar systems, which have become very popular. Homeowners wanting to go solar can lease, rather than buy, their systems, with little to no up-front costs and rate locks. The two companies have the highest exposure to the booming residential market and have been top picks among Wall Street analysts.

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Arizona

Arizona has 1,822 megawatts of solar electric capacity, with most of it coming from photovoltaic cells. The state was also No. 2 in solar installations last year, as the chart shows.

Arizona’s largest utility, Arizona Public Service, a unit of Pinnacle West Capital Corp.
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sought to charge a fee for solar customers, saying that solar and non-solar costumers alike need to contribute to the grid’s upkeep. In the end, state utility regulators imposed a fee that was much smaller than what the utility wanted, preserved net metering, and both the utility and solar companies called the decision a win.

The fee decision led to a spike in solar installations applications in late 2013, since applications received by the end of that year would be grandfathered in the old system without the fee. That spike will likely be enough to assure growth of solar capacity in Arizona this year, said Cory Honeyman, a solar analyst with GTM Research in Boston.

Rutgers University/BloombergLeft: An array of 7,600 solar panels manufactured by China's Yingli Green Energy Holding Co. converts sunlight into electricity on the Livingston Campus of Rutgers University in New Brunswick, N.J.

New Jersey is No. 3 in solar electric capacity, with 1,211 megawatts. The state was No. 5 in terms of total solar electric capacity installed in 2013 -- 235.6 megawatts, enough to power 33,701 homes, according to SEIA.

That was thanks to an attractive system of state credits for utilities, businesses, and homeowners going solar. The credits are not as large as they were a couple of years ago, but still provide a “valuable proposition” to go solar in New Jersey, GTM Research’s Honeyman said.

As icing on that cake, prices of your average installed residential and commercial PV systems have fallen slightly more in New Jersey than the national average.

It may be called the Tar Heel state, but North Carolina is No. 4 in solar thanks mostly to utility-scale projects.

Like New Jersey, the state offers generous tax credits to homeowners and commercial operators going solar. Solar farms dot the countryside, built by companies such Strata Solar LLC and Duke Energy Corp.
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and their energy sold to big utilities in the state.

Even one of the state’s most iconic buildings, the Biltmore Estate, has gone solar. Biltmore, built by George Vanderbilt near Asheville between 1889 and 1895, is home to a nine-acre solar installation that offsets more than 20% of the estate’s energy needs. The system was expanded last year.

SolarReserveLeft: Crescent Dunes, a concentrated solar power plant, is expected to start operations later this year. The plant uses molten salt to generate power and store energy.

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Nevada

The state is home to Crescent Dunes, a concentrated solar power plant similar to California’s Ivanpah. The 110-megawatt plant is being developed by SolarReserve LLC near the city of Tonopah, midway between Las Vegas and Reno.

The plant is expected to supply more than 500,000 megawatt-hours a year, enough to power 75,000 homes during peak hours.

Crescent Dunes will use 10,000 sun-tracking mirrors the size of billboards, called heliostats, which will track the sun and focus its rays onto a central tower. That concentrated sunlight will heat molten salt -- the secret ingredient at Crescent Dunes.

The molten salt will be used to generate electricity immediately as well as store it for later use. The plant will be able to store about 10 hours worth of energy in its molten salt tanks, which means it is able to be as flexible as conventional power plants, producing electricity during peak periods on cloudy days and hours after the sunset.

Crescent Dunes is expected to begin operations this year, and when it does all of its power will be sold to Nevada Power Company for the next 25 years.

Bloomberg NewsLeft: Wedge Bramhall stands in front of his solar powered beach house in Plymouth, Mass., on Monday, April 3, 2006.

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Honorable mentions

Massachusetts, No. 6 in total solar capacity installed, was No. 4 in terms of PV capacity installed in 2013, thanks mostly to commercial and utility enterprises.

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